Kierkegaard on Hope and Faith (original) (raw)

Faith, hope and love have often been classed together in the Christian tradition as the three “theological virtues”. Kierkegaard does not use that label for them, but he does have a good deal to say about all three. This paper starts by examining hope, arguing that there is an Aristotelian-style virtue relating to hope (a mean between wishful and depressive thinking) and that Kierkegaard could consistently recognize it as a secular virtue. However, his main discussions of hope as a positive state are in a religious context and relate it closely to faith and love; proper hope is a work of love and grounded in faith in God. I then argue that Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith, hope and love is, in many respects, close to Aquinas’ understanding of them as theological virtues (which differs in important ways from Aristotle’s account of a virtue) and that, therefore, it is appropriate to see Kierkegaard’s religious thought as lying within the tradition of virtue theory. The main differ...